Radical religious right off the mark on gay marriage

Radical religious right is ignoring the Bible

The article "Gay marriage strikes out," by Ed Baswell, has me thinking about the double standard of the radical religious right regarding marriage.

People like Baswell get a lot of attention when they start attacking LGBT issues and marriage equality. They claim they are driven by the destruction it will bring to the institution of marriage and their support for family values. However, their rhetoric is based on a combination of junk science and Bible verses cherry-picked to support their own prejudices and lifestyle choices.

Jesus had plenty to say about divorce, obviously the real threat to marriage, but the radical religious right is not on a crusade to ban it. Jesus said in Mark 10:11-12, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery."

It is clear: you are an adulterer if you divorce and remarry. Yet we hear nothing from the radical religious right about those living in a perpetual state of adultery. The divorced need to remain celibate for life.

Hypocrisy! Where are the constitutional amendments banning the divorced from remarrying? Where are the picket signs and letters to the editor declaring the evils of divorce and condemning the perpetual adulterers?

You won't find any! Why? Money! 2014 research in the American Journal of Sociology found that counties with the highest divorce rates are those with the highest concentration of the radical religious right.

Any church mandating celibacy after divorce risks alienating lots of financial support. Conveniently, for the radical religious right, it turns out that they can actually successfully fundraise from spreading fear and loathing of gay people while welcoming perpetual adulterers to their pews. They are ignoring the Bible while preserving, not the institution of marriage, but their own coffers.

- David W. Hylan

Shreveport

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Radical religious right off the mark on gay marriage

The article 'Gay marriage strikes out,' by Ed Baswell, has me thinking about the double standard of the radical religious right regarding marriage.